


Crown & Country: Highlands

by cruisedirector, Dementordelta



Series: Crown and Country [2]
Category: King's Speech (2010)
Genre: Australia, Community: kings_speeches, Falling In Love, Food, M/M, Poetry, References to Shakespeare, Romance, Royalty, Scotland, Speech Disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-15 18:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dementordelta/pseuds/Dementordelta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The further Bertie and Lionel get from home, the easier it becomes to forget the roles they play in public.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Antipodean

**Author's Note:**

> Celandine insists that she should get credit as cheerleader rather than beta.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The physical aspect is something of a surprise to Lionel. A delightful surprise.

Lionel hadn't expected the possessiveness. He’d known he was in over his head, but he hadn’t guessed that it would take the form of carnal obsession, something he'd never felt toward any other person, let alone any other man.

It was ridiculous: as much as he tried to forget it, during stolen moments shut away at the Palace and in the cozy decorated closet behind his consulting room, Bertie was the property of all England. Even here in the Highlands, far from the castle and any other reminder of the world beyond, Bertie remained the King.

Somehow that only made Lionel feel it more keenly.

"I can't stop kissing you," he muttered during a rare pause for breath, looking down at Bertie’s face framed by crushed grass and the odd weed.

"So I've noticed." Bertie's voice was thick with satisfaction. "Don't think for a moment that I want you to stop."

"If we don't take a break, at least one of us will end up too sore to move."

"We'll just have to find something else to do." Laughing, Bertie rolled a bit, pressing his cheek against Lionel's chest. Lionel had wrapped his arms around Bertie and buried his face in the thick hair, now quite mussed from rolling on the ground, smelling of earth and sweat. "I want to love you in every way it's possible for one person to love another."

Helplessly, Lionel laughed with him. "I don't think I have any other appropriate orifices."

"I'm sure we haven't come close to exhausting the possibilities of the ones we have." Bertie's leg rubbed against Lionel's, not suggestively, just enough to remind Lionel of all the ways they'd managed to fit themselves together that he'd never imagined he'd want to try with anyone else. " I love everything we do with every single one of them."

Flushing a bit, Lionel nodded. "So do I." He tried to find words to explain the physical urge, the reasons he couldn't stop kissing Bertie even now, when they'd been climaxing around and against and in each other for hours on end. "I've never felt this way about anyone's body before. Not even my wife's, and she bore my children."

Bertie settled contentedly against him, head on Lionel's shoulder, looking up at him. "Elizabeth wouldn't let me see her completely naked for many months after we were married. And then only after I accidentally saw her in the bath."

Lionel tried not to laugh. Somehow this didn't surprise him. He'd seen the Queen touch and kiss and embrace her husband, but he also knew that ladies of Elizabeth's station, raised to marry nobles, were taught different standards of behavior than the girls he'd known when he was young. "Myrtle grew up as I did," he told Bertie, looking up at the darkening sky. "She wasn't shy that way. We swam naked together before we were married."

Bertie looked a bit shocked. "That would have disqualified Elizabeth from the List of Eligible Ladies for all time."

Now Lionel couldn't help chuckling softly. "We slept together before we were married, too. The tacit agreement was that if I made her pregnant, I was expected to wed her at once." He paused, remembering to whom he was speaking, too late as always to wonder whether his confessions might cast an unfavorable light on his own family." "Please tell me I haven't destroyed your good opinion of my wife."

To his relief, Bertie laughed, shaking his head. "No, you've made me admire her all the more. I'm already honored that she lets me have you from time to time."

"It's different in Australia." Lionel kissed the top of Bertie's head, wondering whether he would ever return, now. Sometimes he and Myrtle toyed with the idea of going for four months, six months, and always Lionel ended up deciding that he couldn't abandon his patients, though in truth there was only one whom he couldn't bear to leave.

"Different how?"

"I don't want to lower your estimation of the colonies, of course, but people aren't so terribly concerned with appearances, and the class differences aren't so dramatic. It's...earthier, I suppose."

Putting his hands together in mock prayer, Bertie rolled his eyes heavenward. "God bless Australia for making Lionel earthy," he intoned.

"I think that's sacrilege." Sighing happily, Lionel bent to kiss his mouth. "I've worked hard on my English manners, but it's an act. I'm a better actor in real life than I ever was on stage -- I grew up around brewers, remember."

Bertie slid a hand over his cheek, kissing back. "But I don't want you to change a thing. I love you exactly as you are."

"Just as I love you." No, it was never going to diminish, no matter how sore he got or how much his joints protested. Lionel slid down to kiss Bertie more fully. "Just as you are, though I don't mind coaxing out the wicked side you so often pretend not to have."

"That's because you're the only one who's ever managed to find it." Bertie smiled a bit against his mouth. "My wife would be delighted to let you coax out every wicked impulse. She's never even let me --" His cheek grew warm against Lionel's. "From behind."

It was Lionel's turn to be startled. He laughed a bit to cover it. "I've never asked my wife whether I could, in the rear. She's quite enthusiastic about many things, but some bits are off limits..."

Bertie coughed delicately. "Not there, exactly. Just, er, from behind." His face was delightfully flushed.

Lionel raised his eyebrows, then immediately forced them down. "Well, she was raised very differently from Myrtle." Out here in the middle of the mountains, he did not hesitate to say things he would never have spoken aloud to Bertie at the Palace, which he was certain was true for Bertie as well. "I'm told that the nation believes your brother's obsession with Mrs Simpson is rooted in her willingness to perform certain activities that -- well, let us just say that you and I have done them apparently without a second thought, but proper ladies seem scandalized at the very idea that such things exist."

Nodding, Bertie spoke in a rush, seemingly happy that Lionel had understood. "Elizabeth was raised in the 'lie back and think of England' school for young ladies about to enter matrimony. If I hadn't --" He gestured expressively. "-- had a bit of experience and coaxed her, I'm not sure we'd have had children."

Lionel smiled fondly. "If you were as generous in the bedroom with her as you are with me, I have no doubt that it didn't take much coaxing."

Bertie returned the smile. "I believe, no, I know, I did a good job showing her that the marriage bed was not a duty but a pleasure. After a while she even encouraged me."

Chuckling, Lionel slid his hand absently through Bertie's hair and down his neck. "I've no doubt that you did." His curiosity was getting the better of him, remembering Bertie's stories of traveling to Paris with his brother. "Who taught you? Were they all...professionals?"

"Mostly." Bertie shrugged a bit, smiling ruefully. "Easier that way. Beguiling ladies into bed with sweet words was never my strong suit."

"Did you ask them what women liked?" Lionel had no experience of prostitutes -- he'd known enough older girls when he was growing up who'd been happy to give instruction merely for the fun of it. "I'd had the impression that most men paid courtesans to learn what they might like themselves, not what a woman might like."

Bertie's head shook. "Not in so many words. But it felt..." He was blushing again. Lionel watched his face as he searched for the correct phrase. "Ungentlemanly not to learn."

Likely that wasn't a message imparted by Bertie's father the King or his brother the Prince of Wales. Lionel leaned back to look at him. "I keep wondering how a treasure like you emerged from a background like yours. You're not only considerate, but you're a romantic at heart."

Snorting, Bertie turned away from his scrutiny. "Ladies don't like romantic men. They like dashing heroes, like David."

Echoing the snort, Lionel reached to tilt Bertie's chin. "Ladies may want to be courted by dashing heroes, but no matter their rank, I suspect they want to marry solid, responsible, loyal men who can make them happy in bed." He kissed Bertie for emphasis, not letting up until he felt Bertie's lips turning up against his.

"That's me to the core." He clenched his hand over his heart. "Though I'm not sure how I was lucky enough to end up with a dashing speech therapist to rescue me from my gilded cage. I'm the one who found a treasure."

With a delighted smile, Lionel kissed him again. "I'm the opposite of dashing. And heroic. I can't even get myself cast as Richard III. If this were a play, I'd be the comic relief."

Bertie regarded him thoughtfully. "Stammerers are always the comic relief, so we could be that together."

It never failed to wound Lionel to hear Bertie refer to himself in such a way. "You aren't defined by your stammer. You're the brave hero who overcame his impediments and saved the nation." He gave Bertie an exuberant kiss before Bertie could argue. "And I suppose I'm your court jester, because this is certainly not _Edward II_."

He wasn't entirely certain that Bertie would be familiar with Marlowe's controversial play, but Bertie chuckled -- giggled, really -- kissing Lionel as he did so. "You do always make me laugh," he said. "I hope the jester doesn't mind serving the king."

Lionel laughed in reply, closing his hands around Bertie's back, squeezing him close. "It is the greatest pleasure of the jester's life to serve the king." Pausing, he smiled a bit, moving his hips suggestively. "Except perhaps when the king serves the jester."

Bertie wriggled all over against him, licking his lips. "Oh, the king would enjoy that," he murmured. Lionel bore him back down in the grass again, pinning him in place, unable as ever to stop kissing him. Bertie allowed it, but he looked at Lionel with something new in his eyes -- something as greedy as Lionel felt. "You are mine, you know."

"Oh, yes, Bertie. I know." Lionel groaned helplessly. It was far too late to argue the point now, either with Bertie or with himself, and moreover, Lionel didn't want to fight it. "In every way it's possible for one person to love another."

"Then love me," Bertie commanded, and Lionel hastened to obey.


	2. Some Other Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From so far away, it’s easy to forget that Bertie lives in a different world.

"If you kiss me like that, I won't be held responsible for the consequences."

Lionel raised his head to look at Bertie, leaning on his elbow, which was pressed deep into the sheepskin beneath them. He couldn't tell whether Bertie's face was flushed from kissing or from the firelight, which had turned everything in the room a warm shade of bronze. "Tell me about the consequences," he said, smiling.

"I shall moan and become aroused and beg you to commit acts of lechery upon me."

Bertie spoke without a hitch when discussing sex, whether his language inclined toward poetry or phrases so vulgar they made Lionel choke with laughter. "You do realize that when you say things like that, you leave me no choice but to continue? Which makes _you_ responsible for the consequences, not I, love."

Grinning, Bertie leaned up to brush a kiss over Lionel's mouth. "I hope you don't mind how much that pleases me. Nor when you call me ‘love.'" He lay back, reflected flames dancing in his eyes. "May I ask you a question?"

"Of course." Lionel couldn't keep his hands still -- he never could, with Bertie so close -- so he let his fingers wander up and down the arm nearest him.

"When did you first..." Bertie looked away briefly. "When did you first know that this between us was love? Not only curiosity or lust or whatever coarser name you might have used?"

It had not even occurred to Lionel to think in those vulgar terms until he realized what other people would say if they were ever found out -- an understanding that had made him vigilant about discretion in a way that was foreign to him, since he'd never hesitated to show casual affection to his patients. "I was very fond of you not long after we met -- before I would have dared to call you a friend," he replied, letting his fingers drift into the hair at the base of Bertie's neck. "Seeing you was always the happiest moment of my day."

"But I wasn't always a cooperative patient. I wasn't very polite."

Laughing softly, Lionel rubbed at the muscles under his hand. "That may be true, but it showed me that you were stronger than perhaps you appreciated. You were never dull or timid. I enjoyed watching you, though I tried not to make you self-conscious about it."

"I was only self-conscious when my prick decided to be as attentive as I was," Bertie said ruefully, hiding his face against Lionel's shoulder. "I was afraid that I was making you uncomfortable."

"‘Uncomfortable' isn't the word I would use. ‘Ridiculous,' perhaps." Still chuckling, Lionel let his elbow slide, lowering him into the sheepskin, bringing them face to face again. "I never thought any of those coarser names. But it took me some time to understand what I did feel, because I'd never felt that way about a man, and even if I had, I'd have believed it to be hopeless to feel that way about a prince."

Bertie stretched on the sheepskin, changing the patterns of light and dark across his belly, making Lionel's tighten pleasurably. "You never treated me like a prince, for which I am entirely grateful. If you'd spent one moment fawning over me, I'd never have been able to believe you wanted me and not that title."

"You give me far too much credit, sir." It was Lionel's turn to try to hide his face, glancing downward, away from the warmth of the fire. "For months, I tried to tell myself that any loyal subject would have a notable response to the presence of royalty. I found it odd that mine was so physical, but not unprecedented -- the language Shakespeare gives to characters who adore kings can be remarkably sensuous. Everyone is curious, you know, even avowed anarchists -- everyone wants to find out what princes are like in private."

"Did I live up to your worst expectations?" Bertie tweaked a nipple, making Lionel hiss. He looked back up.

"You exceeded them so greatly that I finally had to acknowledge I'd fallen in love -- even my wife saw it, and teased me about it, when I was still telling myself that it was a paternal feeling rather than a carnal one." He smiled as Bertie stroked his chest. "Therapists aren't supposed to do this with their patients, you know, even if they aren't kings. I was weak."

Bertie's mouth covered his. "Don't say that. You were not weak -- you were honest about what you wanted, as you have been with me about everything, from the first. If you were a man of any less integrity, you could have taken advantage of my friendship or used my feelings for your own ends."

"Even so, I was selfish. I knew that I was putting you at risk. Any reputable specialist would say that it was my obligation to love you only as a friend and patient."

"I've dismissed more reputable specialists than one would imagine could make a living in the whole of London." With Bertie's laughter warm against his skin, Lionel couldn't imagine how for so long he'd denied to himself what he'd truly wanted. "What you've given me goes far beyond speech therapy. You've made me a better man, a better father...a better king." Bertie gestured toward his head as if it bore a toppling crown.

"I just hope that if you decide this is too dangerous, or you outgrow it, or you simply decide that you don't want it, it won't poison our friendship. I couldn't bear to see you on the newsreels or hear you on the radio and know I'd never again have you in my life. There, you see -- I do think of you as a king."

"None of those things will never happen." Bertie spread his fingers against Lionel's breastbone. "I can't do my duty as a king without you. And what little part of me is permitted only to be myself can't bear to be without you." His cheeks flushed a bit. "Nor to imagine a time when you might not desire me."

"I think I've always desired you. I just spent a long time trying to persuade myself that I shouldn't." That blush was irresistible. Lionel leaned over to kiss along Bertie's throat. "May I ask you the same thing you asked me? What made you think it might be love and not whatever other name you might have used to dismiss it?"

Bertie's arm came up around his back. "I knew it wasn't lust -- not just lust, at least. I've been well trained to keep my feelings, and my passions, under control. I knew that whether you shared them or not, I would want you by my side."

The skin below Bertie's ear vibrated when he talked. That was irresistible, too, though Lionel knew he needed to be careful not to leave a mark as he pressed his mouth against it. "Had you ever fallen in love with a man before?"

"Not like this. I looked up to a few, but certainly never wanted to kiss any of them. Not until I set eyes on your impertinent mouth."

"You know I have to kiss you when you say things like that." Lionel did so, taking his time about it, until Bertie drew back to look at him once more.

"But you still haven't told me. What made you certain that it was the man you loved and not the prince?"

"Because I knew that if the Palace announced that there had been a terrible mistake, your father was really a footman, and your younger brother should follow your elder to the throne, my feelings wouldn't change."

"Oh." Bertie closed his eyes, fingers gripping Lionel's hip. "You've made me forget how to breathe."

"Save your breathing for your speeches." It was far too easy to become lost in that fantasy, a life without equerries and valets and ministers...too easy to forget that Bertie lived in a different world, one to which Lionel had no access save by Bertie's personal invitation, which could be revoked at any time. "If the people closest to you could know what I just said, they would try to keep me away from you for your own protection, if not purely out of spite for a Colonial commoner with so little sense of his own place."

"I'd never let..."

"Listen to me, it's important." Lionel pressed a finger to Bertie's lips. The fear had been nagging for too long at the back of his mind. "Promise me that if you ever don't hear from me when you expect to, if something seems wrong to you -- if the Archbishop announces that I've run off to the South Atlantic on missionary work, or you read in the papers that I've gone back to Australia to set up shop -- you'll find me and ask me before you believe whatever you're told."

Bertie had begun wriggling defiantly when Lionel silenced him, but by the time Lionel had finished speaking, he had gone still. Apart from the crackle of wood as the fire burned, the Scottish night seemed very quiet.

"I want to tell you that what you're suggesting is impossible," Bertie said finally. "Rationally, I do think it's impossible, but you've frightened me anyway. I must ask -- has someone threatened you? Or suggested that it might be in my best interest were you to resign as my speech therapist?"

"No, nothing of the sort." Lionel did not want to confess to the moment of terror, as sharp now as years ago, whenever he recalled Bertie's valet shutting the door behind him, locking him out of Bertie's life forever, as it had seemed at the time. "But now you know, love, when I do think of you as the king, my courage deserts me."

"And now you listen to me." Bertie's voice was quite assured, though he'd stammered a moment before when asking whether anyone had threatened Lionel. "I will always find you. I won't let anyone come between us. I'll make it clear that heads will roll if you aren't brought to me straightaway."

As if to prove that he meant it as a vow and not mere reassurance, Bertie leaned up and kissed Lionel firmly on the mouth. Stroking his face, Lionel forced his own tense fingers to relax and went back to kissing him.

"There's only one thing that would keep me from you," he murmured when he had to pause to breathe. "And I plan to live to be ancient."

"We'll be old men together." Bertie sighed a bit. "Let them say we're eccentric now -- they'll just think we've grown more eccentric with time. I truly don't believe you need to worry, Lionel. They all know by now how much you've helped me. Being able to speak has made me a much better king than I think any of them expected of me."

The smoke from the fireplace had left traces on Bertie's skin. Lionel could taste it like some exotic delicacy. "I told you you'd make a bloody good king," he said.

"Thanks to you. I hardly stammer at all any longer. Being happy must agree with me."

"Don't underestimate all that hard work." Lionel rested a hand over Bertie's diaphragm. "Though you looked quite happy doing the exercises. Especially the swearing."

Bertie's chest shook under his fingers. "I loved saying ‘bugger' and ‘fuck' to you."

"You do say ‘fuck' with a great deal of enthusiasm." Lionel grinned at him, raising himself back onto his elbow and bending over for yet another kiss. "Of course, you do it with even more enthusiasm."

"It's my favorite exercise. I did tell you that if you kept kissing me, there would be consequences." Abruptly Lionel found himself flipped onto his back, fleece tickling his bum. "And now that you've reminded me of my royal entitlement, I'm afraid that I have a few demands to make..."

Laughing, Lionel nodded. "You always do, love."


	3. The Truest Poetry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation about food, poetry, and love. Mostly the latter two.

“Being your slave, what should I do but tend/Upon the hours and times of your desire?”

Bertie watched with a smile as Lionel stretched lazily, making an attempt to haul himself out of bed since Bertie had insisted that they should eat breakfast. It was probably closer to dinnertime, but Lionel wasn't likely to complain about that, given how they’d spent the morning. “I love it when you recite Shakespeare," Bertie told him. "Which one is that?”

“One of the sonnets.” Lionel sighed a bit. “With the exception of my youngest son, you may be the only person who’s ever truly appreciated my recitations. And he’ll outgrow it soon.”

“I never will. I doubt your children could appreciate the romantic lines as I can.” Returning Lionel’s wink, Bertie pushed himself up on both elbows, surveying the mess they’d made of the room -- blanket tossed on the floor, towel falling off the side of a chair. “I never loved poetry until you recited it for me.”

“I never truly understood it before. No wonder nobody ever wanted to cast me as the amorous hero. It must have been obvious that I was pretending.” Lionel sat up beside him, his expression suddenly serious. “I can't help reciting sonnets when I wake up with you, unless I'm too busy kissing you to speak.”

Bertie felt his throat tighten. He rarely stammered with Lionel -- at least, not the jaw-locking, neck-convulsing sort that rendered him speechless -- yet he was always finding himself breathless when Lionel said things like that. “I don't want you to stop doing either one,” he whispered.

Lionel’s fingers made their way between his own. “‘If our two loves be one, or thou and I/Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.’”

“Is that Shakespeare?”

“John Donne. I didn’t understand him, either. ‘Love's mysteries in souls do grow,/But yet the body is his book.’ I’ve always loved poetry, but I never thought it would mean anything to my own life unless I recited it on a stage.” Lionel’s smile made Bertie’s chest constrict again. “But since we must eat to sustain this frail flesh, come and let me stuff some food into you.”

“Food isn’t what I want stuffed into me, but you know I’m helpless to resist being spoiled by you.” Smiling, Bertie followed Lionel to his feet. Whenever they didn’t walk up to the castle for dinner, they lived on what Lionel could cook -- which, Bertie had to admit, wasn’t much, but he was happier eating burnt bacon with Lionel than he had ever been eating four-course meals with his brothers. “Pass me my robe?”

The robes were in a pile, twisted around each other like lovers, where they had dropped them inside the doorway the night before. Lionel disentangled them and handed Bertie’s over, tying the other one around himself. “I’m always hungry for other things, but first I want tea,” he announced.

“Even I can make tea. And butter bread.”

“Did you have special royal lessons on how to hold a butter knife?”

Bertie grabbed the towel from the chair and snapped it at Lionel’s departing backside. “I was terrible with knives. I wanted to be cutting with the other hand.” He saw contrition on Lionel’s face and laughed, holding up a hand to forestall any apology. “We had lessons on which forks to pick up for which dishes, and how to hold our elbows at the table, but the only food preparation I ever learned -- which couldn’t properly be called cooking -- was in the Navy.”

“I think every boy in Australia learns to fry a fish. Since I was the eldest, my mother made sure I could get eggs on the table for the others if she had to mend something before sending us off to school. But those are all the lessons I got.”

Bertie watched as Lionel washed his hands, rubbing at a sticky spot for which either one of them might have been responsible. Remembering what they had been doing an hour earlier, he smiled as he took out a knife to slice the bread. “You don't mind if l like having you teach me how to do things?”

“Of course not. I enjoy it. Though I'm also perfectly delighted to cook for you, if one can consider cheese toast ‘cooking.’” Lionel leaned over to light the broiler as Bertie watched appreciatively. “If you will be so kind as to butter the bread, Your Majesty, I will slice the cheese.”

Laughing, Bertie obeyed. He had no similar experience with anyone else -- Elizabeth had rarely cooked before she became the Duchess of York, and he wasn’t certain she’d ever entered the kitchen at the Palace except to discuss menus with the cook. Lionel might not have been a particularly versatile cook, but he moved with confidence and the same graceful pleasure in his own body that he brought to muscle therapy.

“Stop watching me like that, you’ll make me blush.”

“I like watching you. Especially your hands.”

“My hands? Nothing special about them.” Lionel bent to put the cheese toast in the broiler before straightening to inspect his own fingers. “Quite rough, really.”

“I disagree. l think about how they feel on my --” Lionel’s eyebrows shot up, and Bertie groaned softly, reaching for the kettle. “I'd better make your tea or I’ll never let you finish.”

“I can’t finish again until I’ve had some food, anyway. I’m not as young as you are.” Grinning, Lionel leaned over to check the broiler. It was all Bertie could do not to push up against him. “This looks edible.”

“Mmmhmm, it does...oh, you mean the food? What are we having, again?” Bertie laughed as Lionel retrieved a strawberry from a bowl and thrust the end of it into Bertie’s mouth. “Mmmm, yes, quite.”

“Go sit at the table and stop trying to distract me.” With a smirk, Bertie bumped his thigh against Lionel’s, then laughed as Lionel rubbed his foot over Bertie’s. “Naughty.”

“Eager. Well, eager to be naughty.” Obediently, Bertie sat, leaning back and spreading his legs as he watched Lionel put the toast and fruit onto plates. “Recite some more John Donne for me.”

“I don’t remember all of ‘The Ecstasy.’ Only my favorite lines.” The kettle rattled over the heat; Lionel took it off, pouring water into the teapot. “‘Love these mixed souls doth mix again/And makes both one, each this, and that.’”

“Go on.”

“I can’t -- I’ve forgotten the whole middle bit. Then he compares the soul without earthly love to a ruler without a kingdom. ‘So must pure lovers' souls descend/To affections, and to faculties,/Which sense may reach and apprehend,/Else a great prince in prison lies.’”

Bertie felt his breath catch again. His eyes followed Lionel as Lionel picked up the sugar, fingers steady and careful as they had been on Bertie’s skin earlier. “You are a romantic, beloved.”

Lionel went still, gazing at him for a moment as if he wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly. “I didn’t write it,” he said finally, clearing his throat and picking up the plates. “Here -- this will taste better than poetry.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“More filling, then.” Lionel followed with the teacups, which rattled audibly on their saucers. “You’re forbidden to make me pounce on you before I’ve eaten. I’ll get a headache and be useless to you all afternoon.”

Bertie cut into his toast and, smiling, held out the fork to Lionel, gesturing for him to sit. “Here.” Lionel raised an eyebrow, but he leaned over and took the bite, looking a bit sheepish. “It would be only fair, you know -- you keep stopping me from breathing.”

Swallowing, Lionel licked his lips. “I’ve burnt the sides again. And I must be a very poor therapist -- not breathing is terrible for speech.”

“That’s odd, because I don’t believe anything has ever helped my speech as much as having you take my breath away. You make me want to hear every poem ever written.” Bertie took a bite of the toast, which was, indeed, a bit charred, yet tasted as good to him as everything else he’d eaten in this kitchen with Lionel. “Explain the bit to me about physical pleasure touching the soul.”

“I think it’s more that the soul can touch another soul, and thereby know that pure intimacy, through the body.” Lionel blew across the tea, sending steam curling away from his mouth, before taking a sip. “When I was younger, I’d have said that was nonsense. If I believed in the soul, which I’m not entirely sure that I did, it was something apart from the pleasures of the flesh.” Carefully, he set the teacup back onto its saucer. “I've read that poem often. Beautiful language. Never thought it had anything to do with me until you.”

He gestured toward Bertie, who blinked rapidly, nodding, grabbing at his own teacup. Lionel had upended the years he’d spent trying to control his emotions, but Bertie didn’t lock up in shame trying to keep them in. They ate in silence for a minute, the only sound the clink of their forks against their plates, before Bertie set his down and reached for Lionel’s hand. “Telling you I love you seems inadequate, but I don't have a poem.”

“‘I love you’ is the best poem I know.”

That smile had always made Bertie melt. He remembered times he’d been angry at Lionel or at himself, and frightened, and bitterly unhappy, when not even his family had been able to alter his mood; then Lionel had given him that adoring, irrepressible grin, and Bertie hadn’t been able to help smiling back. “If I were a writer, I'd record it for the ages,” he said. “I would be a poor king without your love.”

Lionel laughed softly. “You see, that’s very fine poetry. Iambic pentameter, even -- ‘I would be a poor king without your love.’” He counted off the syllables, his expression melancholy. “It isn’t as if you could record our real names for the ages.”

If Lionel hadn’t believed in the soul in any literal sense before, then Bertie hadn’t believed in heartbreak as he did now. His fingers closed hard over Lionel’s. “We'll record it with our hearts.”

“I already have, love.” Lionel’s arms wrapped around him, face pressing his cheek. “Every moment.”

Bertie sighed against him. “I’m so lucky to have you.”

“I’m the lucky one.” Lionel lifted his chin to kiss Bertie’s forehead. “I have what Shakespeare and Marlowe could only imagine -- the love of a king.”

“I never feel more like a king than when I see you looking at me when I speak. You make me feel magnificent.” It was perhaps an odd sentiment when his head was tucked up under Lionel’s chin like a cuddling child, but Lionel chuckled warmly in his hair.

“You were magnificent the first time I laid eyes on you -- witty and clever and impertinent.”

“I was impertinent because I wanted so much to believe you could cure me. I gave you more chances than I’d ever have given any of those other quacks.”

“The question was never whether I could do it, it was whether _you_ would do it, and I knew you would never quit. You don't have it in you to quit.” Lionel inhaled as though he were sniffing Bertie’s scent. “I loved you for that even when I thought you were only longing to find your voice, and I thought I was only longing to help you.”

Bertie doubted very much that he would ever have been able to command his own speech, let alone to speak to the nation, without Lionel by his side. “We found it together,” he insisted. “And this...” His arms squeezed Lionel around the waist. “We found _this_ together. I never dared to dream we’d end up here. I thought you might indulge me once or twice, but not -- love me.”

Lionel’s breath hitched in his hair. “Sweetheart, any delusions I had that I might care for you only as a patient flew out the window the first time you kissed me. You were so brave and generous and I was so happy to be kissing you.”

“I thought perhaps you'd tell yourself you were doing it for crown and country.”

“Quite the opposite. I wanted to toss crown and country into the broom closet for an hour and have you all to myself, just you.” Lionel paused as if he feared he’d said too much, and Bertie burrowed closer, kissing Lionel’s throat, feeling it move against his mouth as Lionel swallowed. “I never dared to dream we’d end up here, either. I expected those kisses would be the beginning and the end of it. But I knew I would love you until the day I died.”

Now Lionel’s voice sounded thick with emotion. Bertie couldn’t bear to hear him unhappy. Shifting up, he kissed Lionel’s ear, then bit playfully at the lobe. “You plan to stop loving me when you die? I shall be most displeased.”

He succeeded in making Lionel snort. “You are correct as usual, Your Majesty. I shall love you always. When have I been able to deny you anything?”

“Besides cigarettes and breaks to rest and the proper use of my titles?”

They laughed together, sitting back, and Lionel reached over to straighten Bertie’s hair where Lionel’s chin had mussed it. “Would you like me to call you Your Majesty in bed, or Albert Frederick Arthur George?”

“Oh, no, ‘Bertie’ is perfect. It's what everyone I have ever loved has called me, besides ‘Papa.’”

For a moment Lionel’s eyes looked damp again, but he blinked it away quickly. “I’m sure you know I never meant any disrespect, to you or to the titles,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I have felt deeply honored to be your speech therapist, and your friend, and your _coeur en sucre_. And, God help me, your subject.”

Bertie’s eyes had gone wide at the foreign phrase. “That is also a very romantic notion,” he said. “Do you recite French poetry, too?”

“Very poorly.” Blushing a bit, Lionel hid his face again, this time behind his teacup. He wrinkled his nose a bit. “Cold. The tea, that is, not you -- you make me very romantic. Even sentimental, as I believe I’ve proved to an embarrassing extent this evening.”

“I forbid you to be embarrassed. I love you sentimental.” Picking up the teapot, Bertie refilled both cups. “I’ve never seen you stoic, and I hope I never do.”

“I assure you, I can be as disinterested as the next man. You’ve only seen me so passionate because I can’t help it with you.” Lionel’s eyes lifted past Bertie’s, looking out the window to the mountains beyond. “I thought I'd been lucky before. I had a happy marriage, three wonderful children, a successful practice that pays for my home and lets me help people...I had no business wanting anything more. I thought that if I wanted the sort of love the poets sing about, I would have to find someone who'd cast me in _Antony and Cleopatra_ , but I scarcely look the part. I never dreamed I might find it in real life.”

As always, Bertie felt awed to be the subject of such passion. He pushed away thoughts that he might be undeserving with a promise to himself to bring as much joy into Lionel's life as he could. "You've given me such happiness that I hardly know how to express it, beloved," he said, remembering the look on Lionel's face when he had used the endearment before, warmed to see it again. "Save to tell you that I love you, more than I ever would have dreamed possible."

"You're the romantic, love," Lionel said huskily, taking another swallow of tea.

"And I'm sure you'd look delightful in Cleopatra's headdress." Bertie grinned as Lionel groped for a napkin before he spluttered tea all over the table, his face turning scarlet with the effort. "Here. Didn't a man play the role when Shakespeare wrote it?"

"By royal decree, even when a woman was on the throne." Lionel narrowed his eyes, pulling down the corners of his mouth. "You just want to hear me say 'I was a morsel for a monarch.'"

"I didn't even realize that was Shakespeare." Bertie thought back to what little he recalled of the play. "What's the most famous line from _Antony and Cleopatra_?"

"'Eternity was in our lips and eyes,/Bliss in our brows' bent.' Which is also from the woman's part." But Lionel took his hand, and Bertie could see that he'd been forgiven. "I don't have a copy here, but I'll read it for you when we go back...if you'll read the other part."

"No." Of course, that was what Bertie had said about singing, too. He smiled, and Lionel smiled back. "I'm afraid all this cooking and eating and poetry has exhausted me. I think we should go back to bed."

Wickedness flashed in Lionel's eyes. He pushed his chair back and stood, holding out a hand to Bertie. “Being your slave," he began, "What should I do but tend/Upon the hours and times of your desire?”


End file.
